Manuscripts
The collection consists of family correspondence, military records, genealogical materials, and other papers accumulated by John Baker Tapscott and his son and preserved by his granddaughter, Katharine Tapscott Rohrbough. The pre-Civil War portion of the collection includes letters to John Baker Tapscott from his friends and family. Beside the family news, the letters of Tapscott's female relatives discuss religious sentiment, reading, local gossip, and state and national news, including Thomas W. Gilmer's death in the explosion of U.S.S. Princeton; the Presbyterian Church in Virginia, Meriweather Jefferson Thompson (1826-1876); temperance meetings, including a temperance lecture given by John Bartholomew Gough (1817-1886), etc. Tapscott's sister Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gilmer Tapscott described her studies of "philosophy, botany, and astronomy" with a Miss Frary. Also included is the letter from Thomas Walker Gilmer to John's father, Baker Tapscott discussing Gilmer's plan to "depart for Texas in 10 or 12 days." In his letter of January 17, 1861, Samuel Baker Tapscott gives his take on the secession crisis and the fallout from Abraham Lincoln's election. The Civil War papers, assembled in a scrapbook, contain orders, reports, communications with Engineer Bureau, and other military records, a few personal letters, passes, passports, and copies of Robert E. Lee's farewell address to the troops. Also included is an account book entitled "The Confederate States in cash account with Lieutenant John. B. Tapscott." Correspondents include Alfred L. Rives, Charles Henry Dimmock, and others. Also included are designs for the Confederate flag submitted by Tapscott in February 1862. The post-war portion of the collection includes Tapscott's correspondence with his first wife Mary Aurelia Cobb that documents their somewhat tumultuous courtship in the fall of 1865 through the summer of 1868. The letters exchanged between Tapscott and fiancée and then second wife Kate Andrews Pegram Tapscott and her father George Pegram were mostly written during Tapscott's travels to St. Louis, Missouri, New Orleans, Louisiana, Pensacola, Florida, and Waco, Texas. The papers of John Pegram Tapscott includes letters from his sisters Annie and Virginia and his friend Edwin Thomas, Jr. a Clarksville, druggist; his uncle Benjamin Rush Pegram, and Harold Pegram Fabian (1885-1975), a relative and a childhood friend. This group also includes childhood letters of John Pegram Tapscott and Katharine Tapscott Rohrbough, including letters to Santa Claus. The collection also contains a surveyor's field book kept by Tapscott from 1859 to 1860, his public lecture of the history of the crusades, 1875, his poems, contributions to various newspapers, reports on the on the transit of Venus addressed to U.S. Transit of Venus commission, 1882, and genealogical materials related to the Tapscott, Baker, Cobb, Gilmer, and Pegram families.
